Violaine Faucon, Trames: Part of an agent’s job is to know the right place and time

Violaine Faucon had been working for the publishing house for 12 years before founding the literary agency Trames with three colleagues. Faucon was an editor, then continued to work with rights at Editions de l’Olivier, and in 2018 she co-founded Trames agency. It is not just a young company looking for open niches in the French book publishing market, but also a modern agency providing personalized services according to the context and customer request. How Violaine and her colleagues managed to create a company in a market in which literary agents are little involved – read in our conversation. 

– How did you become a literary agent? 

– I studied literature and then enrolled in a master’s programmed, which included courses on book publishing, at the Sorbonne. I went through training and internships in publishing houses and that’s how I got to Edition l’Olivie, an imprint publishing house within a large group of publishing companies. At first, I was an assistant to Olivier Cohen, the company’s CEO, but over the years, my position changed completely: I started working on translation rights.

The company decided that the team should include a person who will perform agency work, and deal with rights and contracts. Afterwards, I had a conversation with a few friends: we all turned 40 recently, and we wondered if we should come up with something of our own. There were four of us, and we understood that we had different backgrounds and competencies. That’s how Trames appeared in 2018. In French, it is called à la carte – customers can order either all the services from our portfolio or just a part of them. These are very selective services, taking into account the request.

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